Group payment schedules and payments to organisations 104-24092648

The Group Payment Scheme allows Services Australia to send payments to an organisation (for example, aged care home, disability enterprise or public trustee) for pension customers as a bulk amount. Group payment arrangements generally occur when the customer lives in residential care, or when the customer's financial affairs are being managed by a public trustee which assumes responsibility for the customer's needs.

The Group Payment Scheme can be used where the organisation receives pension payments for 10 or more customers. If an organisation will only receive payments for less than 10 customers, they can be appointed payment nominee for the customers.

A bulk amount is paid to the organisation each fortnight on Entitlement Period End Date (EPED) B / Delivery Date D for all the pension customers they receive payments for. The customers have their payment destination updated to the organisation’s Group Payment Code (also known as Group Institution Code or a Group Home Code).The organisation receives a schedule (or report) which shows each customer's name, Customer Reference Number (CRN) and the amount of pension the customer was paid in the fortnight ending on EPED B.

If an organisation wants to become a Group Payment organisation, see Organisation wants to become a group payment organisation.

Group Payment Organisations (GPOs) must have a record created under their Australian Business Number (ABN), with stakeholder code and service reason TPP (Third Party Payments). This record is then linked to a 3-character Group Payment Code in the RDF tables with the organisations bank account details.

It is preferable that customers paid via a Group Payment are in the same system environment as the physical location of the organisation receiving their payment. Note: this is not necessarily the same system environment as the organisation record, as all organisation records are located in system environment B regardless of their physical location.

For example, if the organisation is located in Sydney, all the customers should be in environment S, if the organisation is located in Adelaide all the customers should be in environment A.

If the organisation has facilities located in a number of locations, then the head office location is used for the system environment. If the customer is not located in the relevant system environment, the customer record should be transferred to the organisation's physical environment before the arrangement being coded. This ensures that only one schedule is produced per organisation. For each Group Payment code, a different report will be generated per system environment. Where customers reside in a different state or territory, this may not be an option. For steps on how to transfer a customer to a different environment, see Inter-environment change of address (ICoA) transfer of a customer record.

If a customer is linked to another customer's record (for example, separated due to ill health or has a carer), the system will not allow the customer to be transferred, unless the linked record is also transferred. That is, a customer with carer links on the Link Summary (LS) screen.

Due to the importance of both the organisation and the customer being in the same physical environment, a Display on Access (DOA) DOC must be recorded on the customer's (and linked records if applicable) record, warning Service Officers not to move the record from this environment due to the Group Payment Schedule arrangement.

Regular payments (and any immediate payments) can only be issued to the organisation nominated on Entitlement Period End Day (EPED) B. Care must be taken to ensure when paying arrears (for example, as a result of finalising a new claim) reissuing a payment, or granting an Advance or urgent payment for customers who are on a group payment arrangement, as a payment issued on any other EPED, or exceeding the system limit, will fail to deliver. See Reissuing a rejected payment.

Customers cannot be on weekly payments for their pension to be delivered via Group Payment. If the customer is not taken off weekly payments, their pension payment will reject from being delivered with the Group Payment. If the customer is on reporting, and they or their nominee report late, will also lead to their pension being rejected from delivering with the Group Payment.

Organisations receive their fortnightly group payment schedule via Letters in Business Hub. This is required to reconcile the group payment received and allocate the correct payment amount to each customer.

Note: any organisations that have not transitioned to Business Hub and are still accessing their group payment schedules via Centrelink Business Online Services, must be transitioned over to Business Hub.

Each person at the organisation is required to create a Provider Digital Access (PRODA) account and obtain a Registration Authority (RA) number. The organisation’s Business Hub Access Manager can give access to their staff for the organisation record in Business Hub once they have an RA number. For more information see Managing personnel and updating details in Business Hub

Group Payment schedules can be accessed online from the Thursday morning following payment delivery (EPED B / Delivery Date D). Organisations that receive their schedules online will not receive a paper copy of their schedule; however, the fortnightly schedule can be reprinted by Service Officers if requested and will issue via surface mail.

If a Group Payment schedule has not been received, staff must lodge a service request with mySupport. The Process page contains specific instructions in these situations.

Organisations that receive their fortnightly schedule online can request reprinted copies of the schedule from the agency. Schedules can be reprinted from the History Summary (HS) screen up to 62 days from the date of payment or, if 62 days or more, they can be retrieved from the Archive and Culling Engine (ACE).

If a group payment organisation wants to change their bank account that the customers’ payments are paid into, they need to contact National Business Gateway.

To cease a Group Payment Schedule arrangement, see Changing payment destination. New payment destination information for the customer is required when ceasing a group payment arrangement.